The alternative currencies set up by the Nazis in ghettos and concentration camps across Europe served to establish a false sense of “normalcy”.
Else Lasker-Schüler’s Drawing: “The Banished Poet”
Since 1974, Lasker-Schüler’s artistic estate has been preserved at the National Library of Israel
Divided Germany, relations with Israel and the reunification of Germany
The partitioning of Germany into occupied areas was, in effect, the beginning of the political division of the state which endured until 1989. Each of the Allied powers advanced its interests in the area under its control
Letter of First German Ambassador, Rolf Pauls, to Chava Steinitz (Buber)
Some of the Israeli public opposed the establishment of relations
The Student Demonstration against the Nazis and against Anti-Semitism, Munich, 1960
“It is impossible to define anti-Semitic activity as a prank. It is directed not only against the Jewish citizens who live with us, but against the basic rights of our country. What is called for is not punishment, but education!”
Marcel Reich-Ranicki and the German Literature
Reich-Ranicki (1920-2013), a Polish-born Jew and Holocaust survivor, was the preeminent authority in modern literary criticism in Germany
David Ben Gurion Meets Conrad Adenauer in New York, 1960
At the beginning of 1960, Israeli and West German leaders decided that it was time for a certain détente. This took the form of an official meeting between the two head statesmen: David Ben Gurion and Konrad Adenauer
Postcard from Curt David Wormann to Felix Weltsch, 1955
Who was Curt Wormann? What was he doing in Germany just ten years after the end of the war? And who was Felix Weltsch?
Erich Kästner’s Poems in Hebrew, 1965
Kästner sympathized with the Zionist idea and even visited Israel a number of times. Some of his books were translated into Hebrew already in the 1930s
Theodor Heuss in Jerusalem
“The Germans must not forget what was done during these shameful years. […] Nobody, absolutely no one, will relieve us from that shame.”
